1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to organization and processing of flat file data, and more particularly to systems, methods, and computer program products for delivering content from several flat file databases that can reside locally and/or remotely.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, stored data on a server is organized according to a plurality of files in a file system. In an application for storing, retrieving, and drawing geospatially organized data (such as an interactive viewer for geospatial data), each node may use a separate file for each drawable, with the various files being organized in a hierarchy of directories. Data representing imagery can be stored in basically the same way, possibly with different directory hierarchy and file naming protocols (for example, the clipgen format). Quadtree packets, which are the data files that are sent to the client that describe the quadtree structure and contents of the database, are computed beforehand and stored as files on the server. If a large amount of data is to be managed, creation and storage of such a database can overload a conventional file system. In order to mitigate the strain on the file system, a special output format may be employed to transfer the files. Even with such an arrangement, large amounts of data can result in corruption of the file system.